A typical fiber optic cable includes a central core including a plurality of buffer tubes each containing approximately twelve to twenty-two protectively-coated individual optical fibers. A glass fiber without its protective covering is only 125 microns in diameter, where a micron is one-millionth of a meter (hereinafter “μm”) or only 0.000039 inches.
When a splice is made between two glass fibers in the field, an individual fiber is first taken out of its buffer tube and a portion of the plastic coating is necessarily removed from the vicinity of the splice-junction. The glass fiber is scored with a special cleaver and put in a fusion machine along with the glass end from the other fiber to which it is being spliced. The fusion machine burns or melts the two glass ends together forming the splice which needs to be covered and protected.
Typically, spliced fibers in the field are maintained in fiber-separator apparatus termed a “manifold” which rests in a container termed a “splice tray.” Currently, there are two approaches to storing spliced fibers in the manifold of a splice tray. One technique is to put a heat shrink over the splice-junction of an individual glass optical fiber, shrink it down using a heat source and, thereafter, place it in a manifold spaced apart from other optical fibers being held separately in that manifold. This approach has drawbacks including an increased attenuation at the splice-junction, long down-time required for the splice operation, and attendant high cost.
The other technique is to place all fibers that are spliced into a bare-glass fiber manifold chip, where each fiber is separated from the other. Then, one spreads room-temperature vulcanized silicone (RTV) over the tops of the fibers and manifold, and covers the vulcanized combination with a clear plastic sheet to contain the RTV while it cures. With this technique, a big problem can be encountered when attempting to remove one of the fibers to get to its splice-junction. That fiber is typically removed from the RTV and cleaned with a razor-knife. This is a risky operation because neighboring fibers in the same manifold may be carrying live communication traffic, where a slip of the razor knife can easily cause an outage in one or more neighboring fibers.
Therefore, there is need for a different kind of mechanism which can address the issues noted above and permit a technician to easily insert a single fiber into, and/or remove a single fiber from, a manifold holding a plurality of other optical fibers which can be carrying communication traffic.